Traditional BASE is even more boring and monotonous at 15-20 hours/week of low-intensity workouts. Sweet spot BASE (SSB) high-volume increases intensity a bit, and decreases time to 8-11 hours/week. And at the other volume extreme, SSB low-volume is around 3.5 hours/week and has to toss in more intensity.
The point of BASE is to build an aerobic foundation. There are proven benefits of “training slow now to get fast later” - Aerobic base training: Going slower to get faster | ACTIVE - but it takes a huge time commitment on the order of 15-20 hours a week. Sweet-spot increases intensity a bit to reduce volume, while still getting some of the benefits of traditional base. For most people, its an acceptable tradeoff.
I’m thinking I might have to revisit my plan trajectory. Was going to do SSBHV but perhaps MV with a few tweaks might suit me better – not because of the time/TSS but because of the composition of workouts.
HV won’t directly address my lactate weakness, even though that’s not what the plan is designed to do. But looking at my plan path, I’ll get very little O/U work in the next 5 months.
The Traditional Base 1 plans are even worse than the Sweetspot Base - the same workout ‘n’ times for the whole week! These honestly need way more thought to make them interesting and more attractive to someone wanting to go this route.
The point that @Captain_Doughnutman was making was that SSB LV and SSB MV are not exclusively sweet spot as there is a bit of variation with over-unders towards the end on part 1 and some VO2 mixed in during Part 2, whereas the HV plan is exclusively sweet spot in Parts 1 and 2.
I know what the point of base training is. I just don’t see the point of telling a paying customer to repeat exactly the same workout 4 or 5 times in a week. There needs to be some form of variation within the context of doing aerobic rides, whether that is to vary the length slightly from day to day or just pick a workout with the steps in intensity in a different order. Something to add variation.
I agree having just gone through Traditional 1 & 2, starting Traditional 3 today. Are you telling me you can’t get the exact same training load, intensity and desired affect by mixing up the workouts? It’s boring as hell, especially Traditional 1. It “appears” very lazy programming, even though I know it’s not. I don’t care if you switched the smallest of things in the workout and called it a different name, just anything to break up the monotony.
They tell the customer that traditional base is almost never the correct answer and to do SSB unless you are recovering from an injury or some other thing that limits your intensity.
Unless you have “too much time” before your “A” race. They specifically said on the podcast if you have time for a Base / Build / Base / Build / Specialty, then that first Base should be Traditional Base. So that’s what I’m doing.
Not sure this is the case. In O/U workouts that “pronounced state” is what you are trying to induce in order to train your body (and brain) how to deal with lactate.
With SS work your body will never have to deal with that type of overload. It’s like saying doing Z1/2 work will improve your VO2 abilities…true, it will, but never like doing actual VO2 intervals will.
As for the addition of O/U and VO2 workouts in SSBLV-MV, seems like a case of chasing FTP improvements over genuinely building an aerobic base. Maybe just admit to the customer that doing L/MV will result in lesser improvements than doing HV instead of trying to match improvements utilising non-aerobic, higher IF sessions. Would be intersting to see TR Big Data set on the FTP gains from L/M/HV plans and if the difference is that much greater.
The plans as designed (in all phases) will help the bulk of users, especially those new to training; I think the real value of TR is being able to customise your plan/calendar using their library to suit your specific requirements.
That’s the phase sequence I’m doing but did SSBLV first. Maybe if I had another 2 months of “extra” time I would have done Trad Base…but then I would have just done long Z2 rides outside.
This is what I have done last couple years to I think good results. I essentially add a set of intervals/interval to each workout. Get the O/U’s and a bit more volume.
Traditional 1 is the only one that has the repeated workouts. I’m sure you can mix up the workouts but they’re essentially all going to be long easy rides, so whether the power changes by 6 watts at minute 42 of a 3-hour ride or minute 48 of a 3-hour ride, I’m not sure it matters that much. You might just free ride it and stay at 60-65% FTP for however many hours.
Wow…thought I was the only one! Just finished week 5 of SSB1 mid volume and after week 3 felt as strong as an ox. As soon as I hit the over and unders I imploded big time!
I don’t use a fan and was thinking when I do intense workouts to threshold or over/unders I start struggling 20-30 mins in as I’m dripping like Niagara Falls…could this be having an impact ?
When the body over-heats it uses its limited resources to cool itself…but those same resources are also required by your muscles. You can either work hard or stay cool, but not both at the same time.
My personal opinion is that McAdie +1 is simply too hard and should have been changed with the last round of training plan tweaks. The failure rate looks high.
I made my own “+0.5” version (90 secs under, 90 secs over instead of 60/120) and still failed it in the 4th interval - admittedly quite fatigued, but if it’d been +1 I probably wouldn’t have made it past interval 2.
